Fabrication of a controllable bio-micropump driven by skeletal muscle cells

Electrical stimulation was applied to drive rat skeletal muscle cells. Then this driving force was utilized to fabricate a diaphragm type micropump. First, a skeletal muscle cell sheet, which consisted of skeletal muscle cells on a PDMS sheet, was fabricated to extract the drive force from the cells. These cells are known to align along a micro pattern. We took advantage of this principle and patterned the PDMS sheet with parallel lines and spaces. We succeeded in aligning the cells along this pattern. Then the pattern was aligned radially to optimize it for the diaphragm type micropump and the cells also aligned along this optimized pattern. Finally, we successfully drove the skeletal muscle cell sheet by electrical stimulation and its responses to various frequencies were observed.